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CALVINISM 



AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 



By THOMAS BALCH. 



1876 



PHILADELPHIA: 

Allen, Lane and Scott, 

1211-1213 Clover Street. 

1909. 



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INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



This fourth centenary year of the birth of the leading 
religious reformer of the French race, a son of Picardy, 
seems an appropriate time to reprint this article, Cal- 
vinism and American Independence. For this paper 
shows the great influence that the religious ideas that 
emanated from Geneva had upon the development and 
formation of the political institutions of the United 
States. It was originally printed in The Presbyterian 
Quarterly Review, for July, 1S76. The author, Mr. Balch, 
a member of the Philadelphia Par, who died March 
2 c )ih, 1877, was the author or editor of many histor- 
ical or economic works. Among these were :— 

Letters and Papers relating chiefly to the Provincial 
History of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, 1855. 

Papers relating chiefly to the Maryland Line during 
the Revolution: published by the Seventy -Six Society, 
Philadelphia, 1857. 

Les Francois en Ameriqiic pendant la Guerre de I'lnde- 
pendance des Etais-Unis, 1777-1783: Paris, 1872. 

International Courts of Arbitration: The Laiv Maga- 
zine and Review: London, November, 1874, reprinted 
at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1874. 

Free Coinage and a Self -Adjusting Ratio: Philadel- 
phia, 1877. 



CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 



By Thomas Balch. 



Calvinism has been discussed so often, and in so many 
ways, and from such diverse standpoints, has been the 
theme of such acrimonious attack and of such loyal 
defense and eulogy, that it appears almost superfluous 
to add another to the numerous essays concerning it. 
But its remuant force as a political instrument, oftener 
recognized by publicists than by theologians, does not 
seem to have been examined with a care worthy of the 
vast effects it has wrought. The learned historian of 
the Reformation (Merle d'Aubign6) proposed to make 
this the subject of the crowning chapter of his last 
and profoundest work. 1 He died without having 
commenced what would have been a much needed and 
much valued contribution to political science, as well 
as to religious history, for it may be fairly asserted, 
that to the social mechanism, instituted by the great 
reformer, developed and modified by time and the ex- 
perience of succeeding generations, we owe that form 
of political organization under which we live, com- 
monly called Constitutional Republicanism. This 
species of government was wholly unknown to the 
ancients. As late as Montesquieu, that eminent pub- 
licist held that republicanism could flourish only in 

1 Sec preface to Mr. Gate's admirable translation of The Refor- 
mation in the Time oj Calvin, by Merle d'Aubign£ London, 1875. 



CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

communities of limited territory, for at the time he 
wrote, the effects of Calvinism were but partially ex- 
perienced, and Calvinism itself seemed almost perishing 
beneath a brutal and unsparing persecution. His rare 
judicial sagacity failed not, however, to discern that 
Protestantism, from its very nature, 2 ought to develop 
political independence. 

Not in Europe, not until transplanted beyond the 
ocean, did the reformed religion yield its most benefi- 
cent fruits. The earliest attempts at colonization within 
the territory occupied by the revolting colonies were 
made by French Protestants on the banks of the river 
Saint John. These attempts were unsuccessful, but 
from the day that the Huguenots, sent out by Coligny, 
put their feet upon the soil of the New World, it seems 
as though they took possession of it as the home of 
liberty of conscience and of political liberty. 

It is the fashion, perhaps too much so, for historians 
to seek the solution of great events in purely material 
causes, and thus our separation from the mother country 

2 The opinion enunciated by Montesquieu Esprit des Lois XXIV 
I. have been controverted by a distinguished Roman Catholic writer 
of our own day, M. de Parieu, who contends, Prim, pes de la Science 
Politique, Paris, 1S70, p. 16, that although it was asserted that Prot- 
i . i autism should have led to political freedom, "yet it has not at- 
■I this result generally, or to a considerable extent, as may be 
seen by an examination of the constitution of many of the Protestant 
Stales of modern Europe." 

[With de Parieu's book, compare the essay of another Roman 

1 "' '' writer, Emile de l.aveleye, professor in the faculty of the 

University of Liege: Le ProUstantisme et le Catholicisme dans lent 
rapport! a >e> la liberty et la prosperity des peuples, first published in 
the Revue de Belgique, Brussels, January 15th, 1.S75, and reprinted 
in de Laveleye's Essais et Etudes, Premiere Serie, Pans and Ghent, 
1894, page 371. See al , , in the same volume, page 404, de Laveleye's 
paper, 1 V /' influence ,lc la religion sur les formes de gouvernement.] 



CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 3 

is laboriously traced to the legislation about taxes and 
imposts. But so momentous a change in the condition 
of a people must be ascribed rather to moral and po 
litical influences, long existing and routed in its hearts 
and habits, chief among which was the Calvinism of a 
large part of the population. We propose, therefore, to 
trace in the following pages the political vicissitudes of 
the combat which that form of religious belief waged 
with imperial and pontifical absolutism in Europe, and 
the part it had in the creation of a new nation, whose 
mere existence is a living, disturbing force in the world's 
economy, and whose future is far beyonel the ken of 
mortal vision. 

The successive reformations of Christianity were the 
natural results of its development, and here we propose 
to examine more particularly the last of these phases, 
Calvinism, the effects of which were felt in France 
through the Huguenots, in Holland through the Ana- 
baptists, in Scotland through the Presbyterians, and in 
England through the Non-Conformists and the Puritans. 
This examination will enable us to see why the agents 
of France in the English Colonies of America, such as 
DeKalb and Bon Vouloir, found in the religious prin- 
ciples of the colonists an element of disaffection toward 
the mother country, and why they counseled the French 
government to foster and cherish it, as it was the only 
force capable of arousing public opinion to such a de- 
gree as to produce a rupture with England at the first 
opportunity. 3 

3 See, upon this subject, La Vie de Thomas Jefferson. By Cor- 
nells DeWitt. l'aris, 1861. 

.1 New Journey in X^rtli America. By the Abbe Robin. Phila- 
delphia, 1782. "Intolerant Presbyterianism must have long ago 



4 CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

The religious perturbations set three different peoples 
in motion, and had a different character and result in 
each of them. 

Among the Sclaves, the movement of which John 
Huss was the leader, was rather national than religious. 
It resembled the last glimmers of the pile lit by the 
Council of Constance, at which the reformer perished 
(1415). 4 

The Reformation promoted by Luther, took its 
deepest roots among the Germans. It was also more 
thorough, while preserving an exclusively national char- 
acter. The diatribes of Hans Sachs were in verses, 
scarcely understood except by the laboring classes of 
Franconia. The fiercest invectives of the chivalrous but 
unhappy Von Hiitten were in the uncouth dialect of 
the day. It not only denied the authority of the Pope, 
but rejected that of Councils, then that of the Fathers, 
in order to bring itself face to face with the Holy Scrip- 
ture. This manly and energetic monk, whose square 
and jovial face made him popular, exercised a com- 
manding influence. The vigorous hatred with which he 
combated the Roman clergy, then owning one-third of 
the soil of Germany, drew around him all who suffered 

sowed the seeds of hatred and discord between them and the mother 
country." 

Presbytcrianism and the Revolution. By the Rev. Thomas Smith, 
1845. 

The Real Origin of the Declaration of Independence. By the Rev. 
Thomas Smith. Columbia, 1847. 

DeKalb's Correspondence, has lately been given to us by the in- 
dustry and labor of Dr. Frederic Kapp, member of the German 
Imperial Parliament, in his genial and eloquent life of DeKalb. 

4 See The Reformers and the Reformation; John Huss and the 
i 'ouncil of Constance. By Emile de Bonnechose. 2 vols. 12 mo. 3d 
edition. Paris, 1870. A very learned and interesting work. 



CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 5 

in fortune from this imposition, all who detested the 
alien occupants of their native land, all who revolted 
at the viees and disorders of the professed teachers ol 
holiness. The war, which the German princes then had 
to maintain against the Catholic sovereigns and the 
allies of the Pope, ended in giving to Luther's Reforma- 
tion that essentially Teutonic character which it ever 
afterward maintained. 

In the Latin race, the most advanced of all in an 
intellectual point of view at that period — which to-day 
still pretends to the empire of the world (urbi cl urbi)— 
John Calvin organized a transformation, the most thor- 
ough and most fruitful in political results. Born in 
France, at Noyon (in Picardy), in 1509, the new re- 
former, after having studied theology and subsequently 
law, published at Basle, when twenty-seven years of 
age, his Institutio Christianas Religionist which he 
dedicated to the King of France. Driven from Geneva, 
and then recalled to that city, thenceforth he was all 
powerful there. He desired to reform alike morals and 
creeds, and himself furnished an example of the most 
austere morality.''' His theocratic rule deprived the 
Genevese of some of the most innocent enjoyments of 
life ; but owing to his vigorous impulse, Geneva acquired 
great importance in Europe. 

5 Calvin writes Oct. 13, 1536, to his friend Farel, about a French 
edition which preceded that cited in the text. As far as known 
this French publication is lost. The copy in the library at Zurich 
seems to be a translation of it into Latin, and in a lengthy title-page 
is stated to be by Joanne Calvino, Novio dunensi autore, Basili.i 1 , 
MDXXXVI. The Amsterdam edition of Calvin's work from Ship- 
per's Press, 1 fi68, has a finely engraved portrait of the Reformer. 

6 This sternness of character had been early displayed. While at 
school his comrades had nicknamed him, "the accusative ia.se." 



6 CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

Bolder in his reforms than Luther, he was also more 
thorough and systematic. He clearly comprehended 
that his doctrines would neither spread nor last if they 
were not condensed into a code. A summary of them, 
the Profession of Faith, in twenty-one articles, 7 was 
given to the world (Nov. 10, 1536), 8 and we find the 
spirit of it, though not the letter, in many a political 
document of after days. According to this code, the 
pastors were to preach, to administer the sacraments, 
to examine candidates for the office of the ministry. 
Authority was in the hands of a synod or consistory, 
essentially democratic in its construction, for it was 
composed one-third of pastors and two-thirds of laymen. 

Calvin perfectly understood the secret of the increas- 
ing strength of the disciples of Loyola. Like the founder 
of the order of Jesuits, he desired to place the new 
social condition upon the most absolute equality, oper- 
ating under the control of the severest discipline. He 
retained the power of ex-communication 9 for his church, 
and himself exercised authority over his followers with 
such rigid inflexibility, that it amounted almost to 
cruelty. When the man had disappeared, his princi- 
ples survived him in the social organization which was 
his work. The equality of men was recognized and 
publicly professed; the most austere morality was prac- 
ticed, and when the hour of agony or death arrived, 

7 As to the real authorship, see Merle d'Aubigni, vi : 337, who 
examines the question, whether Calvin's draft was probably lost 
and Farel's adopted. But the two friends labored so much in com- 
mon, and Calvin dominated Farel so much, that the document is 
rally considered to have been the work of Calvin. 

N D'Aubign6, citing Registers of Council. 

'' D'AubignS vi: 3-13. 



CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. / 

their faith and discipline enabled the Calvinists to make 
the most heroic efforts, to endure the most frightful 
tortures, for the sake of conscience and political liberty. 10 

From Geneva this form of religion passed into France 
and through Alsace into Holland and Scotland. In 
I rreat Britian the two systems — a reform proceeding from 
the people, a reform directed by the government — reached 
the most complete development. In fact, the Anglican 
Church, with its archbishops, its different orders in the 
priesthood, its unchanged liturgy, its immense income, 
its universities, its institutions for learning or charity, 
hardly differed in anything from the outward organi- 
zation of orthodox Romanism. The change consisted 
in the costume, a greater simplicity of worship, the 
marriage of the priests, the ejection of the Pope, the 
lands wrested from monks and transferred to royal 
favorites. The existence of the church was intimately 
connected with the existence of the monarchy, of which 
it was the most faithful, the most loyal support. 

The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, on the contrary, 
developed the democratic tendencies which were the 
very essence of Calvinism. No distinction of rank or 
riches existed among the clergy. They were hardly 
separated from the faithful except in the execution of 
their spiritual duties. There was no delegation of the 

10 In August, 1870, the writer expressed similar views in a little 
volume published at Paris, entitled Lcs Frangais en Amirique. They 
were commented on by J. Lorimer, Regius Prof, of Public Law 
and the Law of Nations, in the University of Edinburgh, in his treat- 
ise <>n The Institutes of Law, 1S72 (p. 301). I am not insensible t" 
tin- In. nor of having my opinions discussed in so learned and author- 
itative a work, but 1 feel bound to suggest that any observations 
scarcely went so far as to say, that Calvin's system was the cause 
or model of the Constitution of Geneva. 



8 CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

priesthood. Every Christian was fit for the sacred 
office who had true piety and a call from God. The 
ministers were poor, but il was because they "lived of 
tln< sacrifice." The power they exercised was purely 
moral, but in Scotland, as well as at Geneva, magis- 
trates and nobles were more than once compelled to 
listen to the stern and energetic voices of their pastors. 

Vox populi, vox Dei was henceforth the watchword 
of the peoples. It displaced the maxim of divine right. 
Upon the principles summed up in it, the States Gen- 
eral relied when they pronounced (July 26, 1581) the 
deposition of Philip the Second, and created the Ba- 
t avian Republic. 

Some years previously Buchanan, 11 and later on, 
• >t her British writers, expanding the views of Saint 
Augustin and Calvin, maintained that nations had a 
conscience like individuals, that the Christian revelation 
ought to be the foundation of civil law, and that only 
where it was in default had the State a right to legis- 
late ami establish rules of action for itself ; that what- 
ever might be the form of government chosen by a 
people, republic, monarchy, or oligarchy, that govern- 
ment was only the machinery which the people em- 
ployed to administer affairs, and that its continuance 
or its arrest depended solely upon the way in which it 
discharged the duty entrusted to it. 

These are the principles which are found in the teach- 
ings of the primitive church, revived by Calvin, and 
which tended to nothing else than to overturn the ideas 



11 Buchanan's work, which had the greatest renown in England 
.•ind m Scotland De jureregni apud Scotos,was printed in 157'). The 
Lex, Rex of Rutherford, in 1644. Pro populo angliae defensio, by 
Milton, in 1651. 



CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 9 

then admitted in the organization of empires, and to 
sap the foundation of the absolute power of sovereigns; 
and their antagonism, therefore, provoked violent per- 
secutions of the dissenters of all sects and all classes. 

This denial of human authority in the spiritual sys- 
tem, led to the denial of authority in the philosophical 
system — to Descartes and Spinoza. 12 The protest 
against royal prerogatives could not fail to produce, 
later on, declarations more or less akin to those of the 
States General and the American Colonies. It was not 
without reason that sovereigns considered Calvinism the 
religion of rebels, and waged so bitter a warfare against 
it. "We must obey princes only in so far as we can 
do so without offending God." 13 "It furnished the 
nations" says Mignet, 11 "with a model and a method 
of righting themselves." In effect, it nourished the 
love of liberty and independence. "We must combal 
not only for the truth, but for liberty," writes Calvin. 
It kept alive in the hearts of his disciples that republi- 
can and anti-sacerdotal spirit, 15 which was to become 
all powerful in America, and which certainly has not 
uttered its last word in Europe. 

Thus, by a singular coincidence, France gave to the 
world Calvin, the originator of ideas which she at first 
rejected, but in whose triumph she was to share, arms 
in hand, two and a half centuries later in America. 

12 Benedicti Spinoza Opera -'/, i: 24, Tauchnitz, 1843. 

1:1 Harmonie EvangSlique. 

1J History of the Reformation at Geneva. 

18 As poisons of the deadliest kind 

An' In their own unhappy coasts confined; 
So Presbytery ami its pestilential zeal 
Can flourish only in a Common Weal. 

Dryden, Hind and Panther. 



10 CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

It was not so much the Catholic religion that the 
Pope upheld by promoting the crusades against the 
Albigenses and the Huguenots, by establishing the in- 
quisition, by condemning the heresies of Luther and 
Calvin; it was his temporal power and his supremacy 
that he so fiercely defended by the terror of the secular 
arm, when spiritual thunders failed him. Nor was it in 
zeal for religion, but from a motive altogether political, 
that Francis the First caused the Vaudois to be mas- 
sacred, and the Protestants to be burnt in France, 
while he sustained them in Germany against his rival, 
Charles the Fifth. 16 His task was to keep down that 
leaven of liberalism which offended his despotism, and 
gave so much uneasiness to his successors. Catharine 
de Medicis by the Saint Bartholomew massacre, Riche- 
lieu 17 by the siege of La Rochelle, and Louis the Four- 
teenth by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
steadily endeavored to regain the absolute power which 
the Protestants denied them. They did not desire this 
"Stale within State," according to Richelieu's expres- 
sion. Like the Catholic Philip in the Netherlands, 
they erected gibbets and stakes and scaffolds, 18 and 
under pretense of opposing the religious reformation, it 
was political reform that they hoped to stifle. 

18 Brantome relates, that the King, after reading Calvin's dedi- 
cation, allowed an observation to escape him one day: "This novelty 
(said he) will overthrow all monarchy, human and divine." 

17 " If this man had not had despotism in his heart , he would have 
had H in his head." — Montesquieu, Spirit oj Laws, v: 10. 

"The ...lor of burning martyrs," they said, "was a sweet-smell- 
ing sacrifice to God." Beza, Hist. Eccles. i: 23. Some examples 
will be found in the History o) the \nabaptists, Amsterdam, 1669 
The interview of William the Silent with the Mennonite envoys is 
an affecting episode.— P. 233. 



CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 11 

But the persecutions, banishments, tortures, and mas- 
sacres ended in results entirely different from those for 
which their sanguinary authors had hoped. The popes, 
far from recovering that supremacy of which they were 
so jealous, beheld half of the Christian populations, 
formerly subject to the Holy See, escaping from their 
spiritual jurisdiction. Spain, bowed down beneath the 
cruel yoke of the inquisition and despotism, lost all 
social energy, all political life. She sank to rise no 
more. The Low Countries organized themselves into a 
republic. Two-thirds of Germany became Protestant, 
and America, England, Germany, received into their 
bosoms some of the most skillful artisans, some of the 
noblest families of France, 1 ' 1 banished by an act as 
unjust as it was impolitic, the Revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes. 

Crushed forever, religious opposition disappeared from 
France. But its political and social work was resumed 
by the philosophy of the eighteenth century, which, 
freed from all religious restraint, engendered results ter- 
rible in quite another way. The example of Amen 
in shaking off a royal yoke, was not without influence 
there, and the Protestants of the New World, saw that 
throne totter, from which Louis the Fourteenth had 
issued orders against them for the dragonnades and exile. 

19 Old Churches ami families of Virginia, by the- Right Rev. Dr. 
Meade, Protestant Bishop, Philadelphia, 1S57. Vol. i. art. xliii. 
See, also, The Westover MSS., in the possession of Colonel Harrison, 
of Brandon, Virginia; History <>/ \'irginia, by Charles Campbell, 
Richmond, 1847; America, by Oldmixon, i: 727, London, 1741. 
Among the French names prominent in the war were Bayard, Ger\ ai 
Marion, the two Laurenses, John Jay, Elias Boudinot, the two Mani 
gaults, Gadsden. Huger, Fontaine, Maury, DeFrouvillc, Le Fevre, 
Benezet, etc. 



12 CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

One single state in Europe, a republic, Switzerland, 
found in the principles of a liberal constitution, as the 
United States of America afterward did, the solution of 
its religious quarrels. At first the Catholics had also 
taken up arms against the dissenters of Zwingle, 20 and 

I' wo works lately published make us much mure thoroughly 
acquainted with the life, the actions, and the doctnnes of Zwingle 
then heretofore. They are: _ 

Zwineli Studien, by Doctor Herman Sp ; ern, Leipzig, 1866 

Ulrich Zwingli, from unknown sources, by S. C. Mocrihoffer, Leipzig, 

18 Born in 1484 at Wildhaus, in the Canton of St. Gall, he was Viear 
of Claris at twenty-two years of age, where he remained twelve 
years A year before Luther, he attacked the vices and abuses of 
the courl of Rome, and his numerous adherents called him to the 
vicarage of Zurich in 1510. In 1524-5 he suppressed the celibacy 
, and the mass, and was married. More logical and 
milder than Luther, he had not the same power of arousing the 
,,, seS He taught, with prophetical inspiration, that the moral. 
,, religious, and political difficulties would end in the separation 
,,,.,„ th, Bishop of Rome of many of his subordinates; that the 
titution of the church ought to be congregational, and all its 
business transacted by the congregations themselves. These views 
were solemnly adopted at the Conference of 1523, as the foundation 
of th. Helvetian Church. He differed from Luther in some points 
especially respecting the Real Presence in the Eucharist, which 
tively denied. He tried in vain to erne to some under- 
| German reformer in the interview at Marburg. 
.1 his doctrines in 152S, he says, "I hope to see them 
extend throughout all Switzerland." When the war brok. 

atholics and Protestants, the Catholics wen- victorious 

1, 1531, and Zwingle was killed in the battle. 

published Civitas Christiana -De falsa ct vera Rehgione. ^ 

"Religioui il matters were confounded in his rnind,^ 

D'Aubigne\ "Christians and citizens were the same to him. 
This universal Christian citizenship, was the dominant idea of his 
life and his works. It was adopted by Grotius, and has been thus 
expressed by Tennyson: 

"With the standards of the peoples, plunging through the 
thunder-storm, 
Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-nags 

were furled, 
In the Parliament of Man, the federation of the world." 



CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 13 

had defeated them. But the conflict taught both parties 
the wisdom of a pacific solution, and they speedily 
agreed that each of the Cantons should be free to adopt 
the mode of faith which it preferred. Thus, only where 
political liberty existed could religious liberty be estab- 
lished without danger to the public peace. 

To revert to the Reformation in England, which con- 
tributed at each successive phase a contingent, either 
Puritan, Covenanter, Cameronian, or Presbyterian, to the 
increasing emigration to the colonies. The declara- 
tion (March 30th) by which the deputies of the English 
clergy acknowledged the king to be the Defender of the 
Faith and the Head of the Church of England, was the 
unexpected result of an amorous caprice of Henry the 
Eighth for Anna Boleyn, and the refusal of the Pope 
to approve of the king's divorce from Katharine. 21 
The people were wholly unprepared for this schism. 
The separation of England from Rome effected little- 
else than the transfer of the authority of the church 1 1 1 
the king, and her possessions to his favorites. Religious 
despotism was none the less complete for assuming a 
dissenting form and name. The Catholics resisted 
spoliation. They were hanged by hundreds. The con- 
tinental Protestants believed they could find an asy- 
lum in the domains of Henry. They found only per- 
secution. The governmental reformation had nothing 
in common with the teachings of the Lutherans, the 

21 It should not be overlooked, that the pope had originally granted 
a dispensation for King Henry's marriage with his brother's widow. 
The schism of the Anglican church dates from the subsequent re- 
fusal of the pope to consent to a divorce. See W. Beach Lawrence, 
Revue du Droit International, 1870, p. 65; Froudc, Hist, of England, i: 
446, for details. 



14 CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

Anabaptists, the Calvinists. It never lost the cruel fanat- 
icism of the expeditions against the Vaudois in Italy, 
the Albigenses and Camisards in France, the Ana- 
baptists in the Netherlands. Mary Tudor persecuted 
in the name of Catholicism. Elizabeth proscribed that 
sect. The Stuarts ferociously pursued the Non -Conform- 
ists, the Presbyterians, the Puritans, the Cameronians. 
The Tudors exercised absolute power as a matter of 
fact. The Stuarts pretended that it existed by right. 
James the First was the most audacious advocate of 
of the doctrine of divine right. "No Bishop, no King," 
said he. He asserted that kings reigned by authority 
derived from God, and were therefore above human 
laws; that their decrees were of more force than par- 
liamentary statutes; that they could disregard charters 
and conventions. Though the son of Marie Stuart, he 
furthered the severest enactments against the Catho- 
lics, using the Gunpowder Plot (1605) as a pretext for 
consigning them to a condition of abject political in- 
feriority, from which they were not emancipated until 
within the last half century. The Puritans, while in 
power under Cromwell, were no more tolerant than 
their adversaries. The Protector waged a war of exter- 
mination in Ireland. He had no pity on the Scotch 
prisoners. " The Lord has delivered them into our 
hands." The officers and soldiers, their wives and 
children, were transported to America and sold to the 
planters. 22 The restoration of the Stuarts brought 

22 A work ascribed to General Fairfax's Chaplain, England's 
Recovery, which there is every reason to believe was written by the 
General himself, gives the prices at which some of the captives were 
sold. Many of them were not destitute of merit. For instance. 
Colonel Ninian Beall, captured at the battle of Dunbar, was sent 



CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. IS 

about bloody reprisals. At last came the Revolution 
of 1688, which gave victory decidedly to the constitu- 
tional party. But the triumphs of the people's right 
was not effected without energetic protests, of which 
some, celebrated in history, such as the Solemn League 
and Covenant, the Declaration of Rights, express in 
precise and energetic language the claims and purposes 
of their authors. This Revolution of 1688 was like that 
of Holland, 1584 — a momentous European event, and 
not merely an English conflict like that of 1648. The 
principles affirmed by it were transported to America, 
and persistently claimed by the colonists as their po- 
litical heritage. Like the Genevese, they demanded 
their ancient Ubertates, franchesice, usus et consuetudines 
civitatis. 

In fact, these principles were carried in the New 
World to their full and logical development. While 
English statesmen were speaking of the omnipotence 
of parliament, and its right to tax the colonies with- 
i >ut admitting their representatives to its bosom, the 
Calvinistic colonists were asserting "the prerogatives 
which they derived from Jesus Christ." We are au- 
thorized, they said, by the law of God, as by that of 
nature, to defend our religious liberty and our politi- 
cal rights. This liberty, these rights, arc innate and 

into Maryland, where he was soon appointed commander-in-chief 
of the troops of that colony. A victor}' which he gained over the 
" Susquehannochs" secured him the eulogies and thanks of the prov- 
ince, with extraordinary gifts and honors. 

Historical Magazine oj America, 1857; Middle British Colonics, 
by Lewis Evans, Philadelphia, 1755, pages 12 and 14; Terra Maria, 
by Ed. Neil, Philadelphia, 1867, p. 19.3; Bacon's Laws of Maryland, 
contains the Act nj Gratitude, 1659, to Ninian Beall and his wife, 
Elizabeth. See also, Vie de Cromwell, par Raguenet, Paris, 1691; 
Les Conspirations D'Angleterre, Cologne, 1680. 



16 CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

indefeasible. They are inscribed in the code of eternal 
justice, and governments are established among men, 
not to encroach upon or undermine them, but to pro- 
tect and maintain them among the governed. When 
a government fails in this duty, the people ought to 
overthrow it, and construct another conformable to 
their needs and their welfare. 

A valiant Scotchman, the Reverend Mr. Craighead, 
had much to do with the spread of these ideas, and with 
giving "form and pressure" to the political principles 
inspired by the religious Reformation, which, later on, 
f< nind their noblest and most complete expression in the 
Declaration of Independence. 

On the 11th of November, 1743, just as Walpole's 
corrupt ministry was expiring, Mr. Craighead convened 
a meeting at Octorara, in Pennsylvania. 23 The con- 
gregation appealed to the rights which Jesus Christ had 
transmitted to us. They deposed King George the 
Second because he "has none of the qualities which 
the Holy Scripture requires for governing this country." 
"They" made a solemn covenant, which "they" swore 
to with uplifted hands and drawn swords, according to 
the custom of our ancestors, and of soldiers ready to 
conquer or to die, "to protect our persons, our property, 

■' ; 1 Renewal of the Covenants, National and Solemn League, A 
Confession of Sins, and an Engagement to Unties, ami a Testimony, 
as they were carried on at Middle Octorara, Pennsylvania, November 
11. 1 7 t.v Psalm Ixxvi: 11; Jeremiah 1: 5. This curious and very 
interesting pamphlet was reprinted at Philadelphia in 174S. It is 
quite probable that it. was known to Mr. Jefferson, who says {Auto- 
biography): "We rummaged everywhere to find the biblical formulas 
of the '<'ld Puritans.'' Franklin, his colleague in the committee, 
could not, as printer and politician, have been ignorant of its exist- 
ence. The only copy which 1 have seen was said to have 1 
brought from North Carolina. 



CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 17 

and our consciences against all attacks, and to defend 
the Gospel of Christ and the liberty of the nation 
against enemies within and without." 

Shortly after this meeting was held at Octorara, this 
same Mr. Craighead removed to Mecklenburg County, 
in North Carolina. He died before the war began, but 
his work lived after him. 

As soon as the news from Lexington arrived, meet- 
ings were held at Charlotte, the county-town (May. 
1775), whereat the people, in view of their violated rights, 
and resolved for the struggle, directed three of its most 
respected and influential members, all Presbyterians, 
all graduates of Princeton College — the Reverend Heze- 
kiah James Balch, Doctor Ephriam Brevard, and Will- 
iam Kennon — to propose resolutions 24 befitting the 
solemn occasion. This intrepid conduct greatly cheered 
the hearts of the patriotic party 25 and aided their 
cause. 

Thus the English colonies in America were larg 
peopled by adherents of the Reformed faith, who fled 
from religious intolerance and political oppression, and 



24 Two of them read thus: " Whoever, directly or indirectly, shall 
have directed, in any way whatsoever, or favored attacks as unlaw- 
ful and serious as those which Great Britain directs against us, is 
the enemy of this country, of America, and of all the indefeasible 
and inalienable rights of men. 

"Secondly. We, the citizens of the County of Mecklenburg, break, 
from this time forward, the political bonds which attach us to the 
mother country; we free ourselves for the future from all dependence 
upon the crown of England, and reject all agreement, contract, <>r 
alliance with that nation, which has cruelly shed the 1 > 1 * . . ► . I of Ameri- 
can patriots at Lexington." American Archives (1th Series), ii: 
855; I'hc History oj North Carolina, by Wheeler, Foote, and Martin; 
Field-Book oj the Revolution, by Lossing, ii: 617, and the numerous 
authorities therein cited. 

6 Elbridge Gerry to Sam. Adams, Amcr. Arch. 



18 CALVINISM AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

who were animated by a profound dislike to the form 
of government which had driven them into exile. Here, 
in this immense country, lived a population of diverse 
origins, but united by the recollections of kindred wrongs 
and sufferings in the Old World, by common wants and 
interests and hopes in the New. The constant con- 
tests in which they engaged, either with a virgin soil 
covered with forests and swamps, or with the natives 
who were unwilling to be dispossessed, inured them 
to hardship, developed their inventive capacities and 
resources, and gave them that moral and physical vigor 
needed by new-born nations. Religion, divided into 
numerous sects, had the same body of doctrine in the 
Bible and Gospel, inculcated the same rules of life — 
the fear of God and the love of one's neighbor. The 
purity of morals was notable. It excited the surprise 
and admiration of the French officers. In their various 
journals and letters they mention the beauty, more often 
the innocence and unsullied conduct, of the American 
woman. 2 " The laity entertained the same aspirations 
for freedom of conscience and political liberty. The 
pastors — rigid, pious, austere, simple in life, energetic 
in soul, strengthened by privations — set an example 
of duty to their flocks, and more than one proved on the 
field of battle, 27 that they knew how to defend their 
rights as Christian freemen. 



26 Journal of Claude Blanchard. Preface. Munselu, Albany, 1S76. 
See, also, Chastellux and others 

27 In the American Archives an,! Revolutionary Records are to 
1)0 found tin- names of several clergymen who served as officers in 
(he Continental army. 



J 



